Just News from Center X – August 5, 2016

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Teachers union leader says next president must completely reset education policy and oust current education secretary

Emmanuel Felton, Hechinger Report
After playing defense for the better part of two decades, the presidents of the nation’s two teachers unions took the stage at the Democratic National Convention along with other union leaders to speak to Hillary Clinton’s labor bone fides. The two union presidents were some of the earliest and fiercest supporters of Clinton’s presidential bid, and in a speech on the opening night of the convention, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten talked about what she hopes they’ll get in return.

Hillary Clinton declares: I sweat the policy details on education, children’s issues

Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, in her historic acceptance speech here Thursday, pledged to provide broader access to a quality education, praised teachers in the course of attacking her GOP rival Donald Trump, and highlighted her past work on behalf of students with disabilities. Her speech was light on K-12 policy specifics, in keeping with a Democratic National Convention that has largely bypassed substantive education talk in favor of more general rhetoric. And she also leaned on language often used by the teachers’ unions, some of her staunchest and earliest allies.

Q&A: The economic consequences of denying teachers tenure

Rachel Cohen, American Prospect
Political and legal battles surrounding teacher tenure and seniority have been raging in California over the past couple of years. In 2014, in Vergara v. California, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that a variety of teacher job protections worked together to violate students’ constitutional right to an equal education. This past spring, in a 3–0 decision, the California Court of Appeals threw this ruling out. The American Prospect’s Rachel Cohen interviewed Jesse Rothstein, the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and a current public policy and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who testified during the Vergara trials in defense of California’s teacher tenure and seniority statutes.

Insiders or outsiders: who runs public school districts better?

Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet
Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington D.C., is in the market for a new leader of the city’s public school system. The current occupant of the job, Kaya Henderson, is leaving in a few months and Bowser has launched a nationwide search for a successor. Who and what should she be looking for? Someone from inside the district? Outside? In this post, education historian Larry Cuban looks at the historical trends of district leadership — and offers the D.C. mayor some advice about how to make a solid decision.

Language, Culture, and Power

 

U.S. wants one million students studying Mandarin by 2020

Corey Mitchell, Education Week
A multinational effort to boost the number of U.S. students studying abroad in China has expanded its focus to stateside Mandarin language learning. The push, led by the US-China Strong Foundation, aims to increase the number of American students studying the language to 1 million by 2020, a fivefold increase. The effort recognizes the growing importance of U.S.-China relations and aims to prepare a new generation of U.S. citizens to engage with China through commerce and culture.

Special program for deaf and hard-of-hearing English learners closes reading, writing gap

Elizabeth Aguilera, KPCC
When Imelda Centeno was a toddler she could only say four words. “Agua, leche, papa, mama,” recalls her mom, Marcelina Rojas. That wasn’t necessarily unusual for a toddler; Rojas just thought her daughter was going to be a late talker, like many kids. But when Centeno was 3 1/2, Rojas learned her daughter is profoundly hard of hearing.

Teachers, dishwashers, engineers: Others like Gaspar Marcos who moved to the U.S. without their parents

Tessa Weinberg, Daniela Gerson, Los Angeles Times
In the past five years, more than 100,000 children and teens have crossed the border between the United States and Mexico without their parents. Gaspar Marcos, an 18-year-old who lives in Los Angeles, is one of them. A recent story about how he works until 3 a.m. and gets to school by 8 a.m. generated a tremendous response. Of the more than 12,000 comments shared, dozens of readers told stories of how they moved to the United States without their parents. Monier Ouabira of Morocco remembers being abandoned at the airport and spending his first few days in the U.S. sleeping there. Edilsa Lopez of Guatemala, who traversed the desert at 13, was kidnapped and separated from her family. Giorgio Kyle of Azerbaijan said he worked for five months straight for $150 a week without taking one day off. Here are their stories.

Access, Assessment, and Advancement

 

CORE districts want state waiver to continue their work

John Fensterwald, EdSource
The six California school districts that designed their own school accountability and improvement model are asking the State Board of Education for permission to continue to develop their hybrid system in 2017-18 and beyond. The board will discuss and possibly vote on the proposal at its next meeting in September.

Top state education officials detail objections to federal regulations

John Fensterwald, EdSource
California’s top two education officials on Monday spelled out their complaints with proposed federal regulations that they said would conflict with and undermine the state’s new plan to help schools improve and hold them accountable for student achievement.

The “$500 million club” of colleges tends to be stingy with aid to low-income students

Mikhail Zinshteyn, Hechinger Report
Call them the top four percent: elite private colleges and universities that together sit atop three-quarters of the higher education terrain’s endowment wealth. Among that group of 138 of the nation’s wealthiest colleges and universities, four in five charge poor students so much that they’d need to surrender 60 percent or more of their household incomes just to attend, even after financial aid is considered. Nearly half have enrollment rates of low-income students that place them in the bottom 5 percent nationally for such enrollment.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

 

Little Rock schools desegregated 59 years old. Now ‘we are retreating to 1957.’

Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet; Jeff Bryant, Education Opportunity Network
Anyone familiar with efforts to desegregate public schools in this country knows about Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., where, in 1957, nine black students enrolled at the then all-white school to test the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. The students were barred from entering the school on Sept. 4, 1957, by National Guard called in by then-Gov. Orval Faubus, but on Sept. 25, federal troops ordered by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, escorted them into the school and they started their first full day. But there is a new story of Central High — and school segregation — that needs to be told, and in this post, Jeff Bryant does just that. Bryant, director of the Education Opportunity Network, a partnership effort of the Institute for America’s Future and the Opportunity to Learn Campaign. He has written extensively about public education policy. This first appeared on Alternet.org, and I have permission to republish it.

An unequal start

Ana Aparicio, US News and World Report
Is racial bias hindering the success and well-being of our nation’s children? Civil rights, racial justice scholars and activists have long answered yes; they have also continuously worked to address the structural racism they see as pervasive in our nation’s institutions.

Opportunity gaps inside schools: Why school integration is more than diversity

Prudence L. Carter, Stanford University; AERA Knowledge Forum Research Fact Sheet
For more than six decades since the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, “equal opportunity” has become a mantra in American education and schooling. Some efforts have focused on creating more racially diverse enrollment in schools; other efforts have attempted to increase learning opportunities within racially isolated schools, essentially returning to the “separate but equal” standard that preceded Brown. One thing we have learned is that diverse school enrollments are a necessary but not sufficient feature of reform if we hope to close opportunity gaps. This is because diversity in schools does not necessarily mean the integration of students in schools (Fine, Weis, & Powell, 1997; Powell, 2005). Even in diverse schools, everyday school practices can often unwittingly perpetuate inequality and exclusion if educators do not pay attention.

Public Schools and Private $

 

1 in 5 charter schools ‘illegally’ screens applicants, report says

Kyle Stokes, KPCC
California law lays out a straightforward admissions process for charter schools: charters, like all public schools, essentially must admit any student who wants to enroll so long as there’s space. But “at least” 253 of the state’s 1,200 charter schools ask students and their families to jump through extra hoops before letting them in, according to a report the ACLU and Public Advocates released Monday.

No new charter schools – NAACP draws line in the sand

Steven Singer, Common Dreams
In the education market, charter schools are often sold as a way to help black and brown children. But The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) isn’t buying it. In fact, the organization is calling for a halt on any new charter schools across the nation. Delegates from across the country passed a resolution at the NAACP’s national convention in Cincinnati last week calling for a moratorium on new charters schools. Approval of the new resolution will not be official until the national board meeting later this year.

Why some billionaires are trying to defeat a state Supreme Court chief justice

Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet
Why would wealthy charter school supporters be spending big bucks to defeat the chief justice of the Washington state Supreme Court? In September, the court ruled that charter schools are unconstitutional because they are governed by appointed — rather than elected — boards and therefore are not “common schools” eligible for state education funds. The chief justice, Barbara Madsen, wrote that “money that is dedicated to common schools is unconstitutionally diverted to charter schools.” Now, charter supporters, including some who don’t even live in Washington, are backing a candidate who is trying to oust her.

Why Detroit is an education-funding vacuum

Erin Einhorn, The Atlantic
With some of the nation’s most devastated schools, Detroit is in desperate need of new ideas, new energy, and lots of money. But when local advocates approach organizations that have invested millions of dollars—and countless hours of problem-solving—into jumpstarting schools in cities like Washington, Memphis, Indianapolis, and New Orleans, the answer often comes back the same: No. Not Detroit. Not now.

Other News of Note

Coalition including Black Lives Matter calls for ‘fully funded education’

Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
A coalition of groups that includes the Black Lives Matter network has released an education policy platform calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring the country to provide a “fully funded education” in order to ensure adequate and appropriate educational resources.

 

 

Just News from Center X is a free weekly education news blast edited by Jenn Ayscue.